Slashdot videos: Now with more Slashdot!

View

Discuss

Share

We've improved Slashdot's video section; now you can view our video interviews, product close-ups and site visits with all the usual Slashdot options to comment, share, etc. No more walled garden! It's a work in progress -- we hope you'll check it out (Learn more about the recent updates).

CyDharttha writes with news that the Mac version of Steam went live today, along with Mac versions of Portal, Team Fortress 2, and many other games. Valve plans to make more games available every Wednesday. Several publications are also reporting that a Linux version of Steam has been confirmed, and is expected within the next few months. Quoting Phoronix:
"Found already within the Steam store are Linux-native games like Unreal Tournament 2004, World of Goo, and titles from id Software such as Enemy Territory: Quake Wars and Doom 3. Now that the Source Engine is officially supported on Linux, some Source-based games will be coming over too. Will we finally see Unreal Tournament 3 surface on Linux too? Only time will tell, but it is something we speculated back in 2008. Postal III is also being released this year atop the Source Engine and it will be offering up a native client. We have confirmed that Valve's latest and popular titles like Half-Life 2, Counter-Strike: Source, and Team Fortress 2 are among the first of the Steam Linux titles, similar to the Mac OS X support. The released Linux client should be available by the end of summer."

Cedega is a hacked up fork of Wine which is itself an incomplete and buggy implementation of Windows APIs on linux - why would you have similar expectation of Valve's official ports? Running portal on a Mac right now, it's infinitely superior to anything achieved through emulation.

Awww come on now. Steam is, IHMO, the only gaming platform that does DRM well. You simply have to register your game to your account and you can play anywhere afterwards (even in offline mode).
The only time you have to connect to the internet is when registering your games (that you likely bought over the net anyway). Non-intrusive and practical; I can download my games on as many computers as I want and play them whenever I want.

I give you some reasons:
- You already trust the Steam shop. This is important for people nervaous about his credit card details
- You have a centralized location to re-download. If you move to another computer (or OS), you just click to download again
- If you have savegames on your Mac, Netbook, PC,..these savegames follow you around. You can start playing on the netbook, continue on the Mac and finish on the PC.

I personally like using it as i don't have to keep track of all my install CD's.. and i can have them installed on my laptop and desktop.. remove as i need space/

even for the net only and DRM part - Steam has put out notices in the past that in the event that the steam network was to go away they would push an update removing the need to auth on the client so that it wouldn't stop working..

now many people can argue that they say that but woln't do it BUT out of the different publishers and networks Steam seems to be the only one actually doing GOOD work - and i have YET to see them re-nig on something, and there for will give them the benefit of the doubt and my money - until they give me a reason not to.

The problem is that a lot of official Linux ports are just the game running in Cedega! Since the Source engine is derived from an engine that has been ported to Linux natively however, I would be surprised if Valve went that route instead of just providing a native client.

2. They do the right thing by having cheap prices on downloadable games--including $2.99 special offers.

3. They are now doing the right thing by supporting Mac and Linux, and by allowing your existing licenses to work with any platform. This is really key, because it means that people who have a PC just for gaming and a Mac or Linux box for everything else will be encouraged to switch to Mac or Linux entirely and drop Windows. If you had to re-buy all your games, that wouldn't happen.

4. If we all support Valve, it'll show that gaming on Mac and Linux can be viable, and maybe help break the stranglehold Microsoft has on PC gaming.

So I already spent $10 with them, and plan to support them more. Once Mac and Linux gaming takes off again, then we can start supporting people who offer DRM-free games.

It claims 'If you download the Mac version, you get the PC version free'.

But it is lying. Even if you have just a PC, you can go in and get a free license. (Which makes sense, as all licenses are apparently for both.) Go to the Steam store start page, follow the link (Which is the link above) on the side, one more click, and, tada, free Portal.

It took me two tries, though, the first time the page timed out. This deal is good to the 24th, though, so if you can't get in today don't fret.

I'm not even going to bother trying to download it yet, because I assume that once I have a 'free license', as long as Stream is concerned, I own the game and can download it later.

Incidentally, I wasn't aware until just now that I could use the Steam store when not in Steam. (I've only been using Steam for a few months.) Thanks for the link.

Apple's HFS has always been case insensitive, back to 1984. This is only an issue because, since OS X is based on Unix, a certain (tiny) subset of people want to use it "the Unix way". Real Mac users (meaning: have been using a Mac longer than 5 years) wouldn't, in a million years, go out of their way to format a drive as case sensitive.

I was all ready to buy Portal with real money, but if they want to give it to me for free, so much the better.

I am going to n00b up TF2 when it comes out until I get some practice in. My apologies to my teammates in advance.

If you don't want to wait until the Linux client comes out, borrow somebody's computer, make yourself a Steam account, and "buy" the free Portal. Then use that same account on your Linux machine and redownload it.

You get the game free, forever, if you get your license now. Steam is actually pretty damn cool about licensing. When they first started Steam, I took my copy of Half Life from 1998 (original version) and moved it to my Steam account. I just downloaded the game, again, on my work computer, so it is installed on several systems, even though I bought it retail, not from Steam.

From my experience, they pretty damn good to deal with, and I have something 30+ games through them. Most of them bought at 50% to 75% off during their weekly sales. I'm 45, so even if the game is two years old, it is still new to me. I don't need to buy the same week it comes out. I'm waiting for Bioshock 2 to go on sale right now, or at least a free week long pass. They do lots of those.

And according to the Steam client itself, if you get the free Portal, you can download and play for Mac or PC, or both. They flatly say that they will do that for all games, so if it has a PC, Mac and Linux versions, you can buy it once and download it on all 3 different systems at no extra fee. One more reason I love giving these guys my money.